Haskell Weekly News: May 8, 2006

   Welcome to issue 35 of HWN, a weekly newsletter covering developments
   in the Haskell community. Each Monday, new editions are posted to
   [1]the Haskell mailing list as well as to [2]the Haskell Sequence and
   [3]Planet Haskell. [4]RSS is also available, and headlines appear on
   [5]haskell.org.

   1. http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell
   2. http://sequence.complete.org/
   3. http://planet.haskell.org/
   4. http://sequence.complete.org/node/feed
   5. http://haskell.org/

Announcements

     * hmake. Malcolm Wallace [6]released version 3.11 of [7]hmake, the
       compiler-independent project-building tool for Haskell programs.
       It automates recompilation analysis, based on import declarations
       in your files, to rebuild only those modules that are impacted by
       a change. It is rather like ghc's --make mode, but faster, less
       memory intensive, and it works with any compiler (e.g. hbc,
       nhc98).

   6. http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.haskell.general/13634
   7. http://haskell.org/hmake

     * cpphs. In a busy week, Malcolm also [8]released version 1.2 of
       [9]cpphs, the in-Haskell implementation of the C pre-processor.
       The major change in this release is that the source files have
       been re-arranged into a cabal-ised hierarchical library namespace,
       so you can use cpp functionality from within your own code, in
       addition to the stand-alone utility.

   8. http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.haskell.general/13638
   9. http://haskell.org/cpphs

     * Cabal 1.1. Duncan Coutts (as the new Cabal release manager)
       [10]announced that Cabal-1.1.4, the version shipped with GHC 6.4.2
       is now available to download as [11]a separate tarball. There is
       also a [12]new mailing list for Cabal development discussion
       including patch review. This is also where patches sent via "darcs
       send" will end up. The Cabal team would also like to take the
       opportunity to invite people to get involved in Cabal development,
       either new features or squashing annoying bugs.

  10. http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.haskell.general/13625
  11. http://haskell.org/cabal/download.html
  12. http://haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/cabal-devel

     * DownNova-0.1. Lemmih [13]released downNova, a program designed for
       automating the process of downloading TV series from mininova.org.
       Written in Haskell, it will scan your downloaded files to find out
       what your interests are and download missing/new episodes to your
       collection. Advanced classification techniques are used to
       interpret the file names and 'downNova' will correctly extract
       series name, season number, episode number and episode title in
       nigh all cases.

  13. http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.haskell.general/13640

     * Student SoC Application Deadline is rapidly approaching. Paolo
       Martini encouraged students to apply to google, using the
       [14]student application form, and [15]Haskell.org is looking
       forward to the several dozen applications we hope to receive.

  14. http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.haskell.cafe/12563
  15. http://hackage.haskell.org/trac/summer-of-code/

Haskell'

   This section covers activity on [16]Haskell' standardisation process.

     * [17]Termination for FDs and ATs

  16. http://hackage.haskell.org/trac/haskell-prime
  17. http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.haskell.prime/1450/focus=1450

Discussion

     * Speed of Binary serialisation. Bulat Ziganshin [18]posted a
       comparison of Handle and Bulat's Streams IO performance, with
       interesting results to ponder.

  18. http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.haskell.general/13625

     * GHCi-based 'eval' and the ML top level. Geoff Washburn [19]sparked
       a bit of a thread when wondering how to emulate the ML "top level"
       in Haskell. Some alternatives were proposed, including ghc-api and
       hs-plugins.

  19. http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.haskell.glasgow.user/9835/focus=9835

Quote of the Week

     Lemmih :: Haskell is the best glue language I know. It's like super-glue.

Code Watch

     * Wed Apr 26 11:21:14 PDT 2006 simonpj
       (ghc): Arrange that -fth is no longer implied by -fglasgow-exts
       Messages involving Template Haskell are deeply puzzling if you
       don't know about TH, so it seems better to make -fth an explicit
       flag. It is no longer switched on by -fglasgow-exts.

     * Fri Apr 28 06:07:18 PDT 2006 Don Stewart
       (packages/base): Import Data.ByteString from fps 0.5.
       Fast, packed byte vectors, providing a better PackedString.

     * Wed May 3 04:33:06 PDT 2006 Simon Marlow
       (packages/base): Improve performance of Integer->String conversion. See [20].
       Submitted by Bertram Felgenhauer

  20. http://www.haskell.org//pipermail/libraries/2006-April/005227.html

Contributing to HWN

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  21. http://haskell.org/haskellwiki/HWN